Under Fire | Page 6

still have him out."
"Oh, we've tried that," said Mrs. Barnard, gravely, "but he had tried twice before he was twenty-one, and they refused him until he brought papers to prove his age. Then when he did enlist and we attempted to have it annulled, they confronted us with these. They refused to believe our lawyer."
"Well, pardon me, which was right, the papers or the lawyer?"
"The paper. It was my own letter; but I didn't suppose they had it when--when we sought to have him released as not of legal age."
Cranston smiled. "Was it Mr. Barnard's proposition or the lawyer's?"
"Well, the lawyer said at first there was no other way that he knew of, we'd have to do that. Of course you understand I wouldn't ordinarily authorize an untruth, but--consider the degradation."
"The degradation of--having to--authorize the untruth?"
"No; of his enlisting,--becoming a soldier. I thought I'd had to suffer a good deal, but I never looked for that."
And then Cranston saw her eyes were full of tears.
She had tried lawyers. She had used money. She had invoked the influence of powerful friends. Each and everyone consulted assured her that the case could be settled in a twinkling. They would get the boy discharged at once. Then one after another all had failed, and then some one suggested to see him, Cranston; he was a regular, perhaps he could help. It was hard to think of her son as a soldier, but, said she, if he had to be, for a time at least, why not get him out of where he was and put him at West Point? She had come, she said, to tell Cranston the whole story, and then he could have kicked himself for the momentary amusement she had caused him.
Ah, what an old, time-worn story of mother love, mother spoiling, mother sorrow! Her bonny boy, her first-born, wild, impulsive, self-indulgent, overindulged as was his father before him, he had gone the pace from early youth; had been sent to and sent from one school after another; had filled and forfeited half a dozen clerkships; tampered with cards and drink and bad company. Mr. Barnard had been willing to do anything--everything for him, but he had dishonored every effort, broken every compact, failed in every trial, forfeited every trust. At last there had been hot and furious words, expulsion from the house and home, a life of recklessness, gambling and drinking on moneys wrung from her until her patience and supplies both had given out. Then some darker shadow,--arrest and incarceration, one more appeal to mother, one more, on her knees, from mother to husband, a compromised case, a quashed indictment, temporary residence at a resort for cure of inebriates--the one condition exacted by Barnard--and prompt relapse, when discharged, into his former habits,--disgraceful arrest because of some trouble into which he had been led while drinking. This, all this she had borne, but never dreamed, said she, that worse still could follow,--that he could sink so low as to become a soldier.
What Captain Cranston would have said to a man who had come to him with such a tale, and with such unflattering conception of the profession he was proud of, need not here be recorded. It was a mother, helpless, sorrowing, and honest at least in her impression of the step taken by her recreant boy. She had come craving help and counsel, not instruction in the injustice of her estimates. Quivering, trembling, weeping, the heart-sick woman in her magnificent robes had opened the flood-gates of her soul and poured out to this comparative stranger the story of her son's depravity. Aloft, two women listened awe-stricken to her sobs. Cranston brought her water, made her drink a little wine, and bade her take comfort, and amazed her by saying that at last her boy had shown a gleam of manhood, a promise of redemption. She looked up through her tears in sudden amaze. How was that possible? He must have been drunk when he did it, and couldn't have been anything but drunk ever since. Cranston patiently explained that so far from being drunk, the boy must have been perfectly sober or they couldn't have taken him. He had been frequently to the recruiting office, according to her account, and must have been sober at such times, or they would have discouraged his coming again. He couldn't have been drinking to any extent since enlistment or he could not be where she said he was, and knew he was, on daily duty as clerk in the office of the adjutant at the barracks. So far from its indicating downfall, degradation, it was the one ray of hope of better days. She looked at him, joy and incredulity mingling in her swimming eyes. "Then why does everybody I've consulted,